


Reverence

by Adaney



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Other, POV First Person, POV Original Non-Binary Character
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-11
Updated: 2019-10-11
Packaged: 2020-12-09 08:02:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 724
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20991557
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Adaney/pseuds/Adaney
Summary: Her world is a machine I want to take apart and understand.





	Reverence

**Author's Note:**

> Created: Apr 15, 2017
> 
> Written for a friend from the perspective of their character.

I wonder how she works. I wonder what the underlying reasons for her actions are. I wonder why she smiles at me, teeth sharp and expression soft, the corners of her eyes divided into the smallest of wrinkles. It doesn't take me long to realize I'm taken with her.   
  
It takes less time to catalog all the ways she's captured my attention, my love for her, and sent me falling down a hole I won't (can't, and don't) want to pull myself back up from.   


i. Her music   
ii. Her movement   
iii. The quirk of her mouth   
iv. The snap of her wrist   
v. Her love for me 

_ i. _   
  
She plays songs less for me and more for me to hear. She sits with her feet on the coffee table, fingering strings that will snap the next time she plays in anger. Her music is the only language she knows how to speak, and she speaks it well. She doesn't sit with the posture she should, back hunched as she plays chords I can only guess at, but that's part of how she plays. It hurts her to sit with her back straight, hurts her to try and convey her feelings without song and expression.   
  
I know that that beneath her shirt, on the arch of her back, are marks I've left. She gives me a mixtape the week after we play our first song.   


_ ii. _   
  
I watch the way she walks with interest. She has a wide gait, slightly swaying shoulders, and a self-assured look that's only a small gateway to her inner confidence. I know the falter in her step when she's tired, the stiffness in her back from working all night, and the rhythm of her steps up the stairs she'd kissed me on. It wasn't the first time.   


_ iii. _   
  
She smiles at me like I'm only a sweep younger. She smiles at me like I know all the secrets to the universe, like what I'd said was the funniest thing she'd heard all week. She smiled at me like she loved me, and it took me too long to realize that the feeling in my chest was the same I'd gotten when she'd played for me. She doesn't smile often, not with feeling.   


_ iv. _   
  
She fights the same way she plays music, without pause, with emotion, with a visceral quality that reveals her feelings. She never fights me how I see her fight others. She doesn't want to break me, to hurt me. She leaves her bite to her words and I leave mine to her flesh. She would sooner let me draw lines in her skin than hurt me, not unless I asked for it.   
  
I'd asked for it the first time I'd met her, and I hadn't know just who I was getting involved with; what kind of person looked back at me over the blaze of a cigarette and tired eyes. Now I know it was the kind of person who could love me like she loved her music.   
  
(The first time we fight I scream at her. I don't understand it. I don't understand her. I don't understand why she makes me feel this way, why she doesn't yell back, why she smiles, why the expression on her face and the emotions hidden in her eyes stops my heart in my chest. I stormed out.   
  
For once in her life she leaves me be.)   
  
_ v. _   
  
She loved me in stages, and she revealed parts of herself to me in the form of memories and friends, mix tapes and yellowing pictures, song lyrics and notes hurriedly scribbled on the backs of napkins. She loves me like she loves the way I make her feel. She loves me in the way she hesitates to hold my hand, to have her skin touch mine, to let the three words that stutter and stop in her throat reach my ears.   
  
I know she loves me, and I know I love her, maybe more than I should.   
  
Her world is a machine I want to take apart and understand. I want to know the pieces of her life as intimately as I know the marks on her skin and her emotions based on the sound of her voice; as intimately as the sound of her playing a song just for me.


End file.
